Q: Just bought a Panasonic Viera tv and looking to link to my mac.  The operating instructions don't help.  Any thoughts welcome

You have two thunderbolt ports on your late-2013 iMac, but no HDMI port. You will need a mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, and a length of HDMI cable to your  TV. If that TV is a 4K model, then it may want newer HDMI 4K cabling (1.4b) specification. You may be able to pick up that adapter at a local Apple, or computer store.

I have a length of HDMI cable attached to my TV (not a Panasonic) with the mini DisplayPort adapter to HDMI adapter connected to it. I power on the TV, and change to that HDMI port, then power on the Mac. My Mac screen is duplicated to the TV. Depending on what defaults are configured in your TV, you may have to change the HDMI viewing program (normal, cinema, wide-screen, etc.) to taste. Start with the default setting.

The current Apple TV will let you display your OS X computer screen wirelessly via AirPlay Wi-Fi to your networked, Panasonic TV. Put the cost of an HDMI cable and associated adapter towards the advantages of an Apple TV. AirPlay has been available within OS X since Mountain Lion.

Is this a Smart TV? As I do have a Panasonic Smart TV and I can see it in the Finder. So I can just copy files (like a movie you made or pictures) to the TVs USB thumb drive or hard disc.

What I wonder: Is there a way to access the Macs Guest SMB-share from the Panasonic Viera. I don#t know what to enter in the TVs file browsing options. I entered the Mac's name an the name of the shared folder. But this does not work. It works from Windows or Mac computers, the can see the guest share and browse it.

Some Panasonic Viera TVs have a built-in Displayport connector and you should be able to connect to a Mac using a simple Mini Displayport to Displayport cable. Assuming the TV supports 4K and assuming you have a suitable Mac then this should even be possible at 4K at 60fps.

Note: The Panasonic Viera is effectively unique in being a TV with Displayport support.

While it would be possible to connect a Mac via HDMI to the Panasonic or any other TV, the built-in HDMI 1.4 port on Macs only supports 4K at 30fps, you can of course do 1920x1080p at 60fps.

It is possible to get a Mini Displayport to HDMI 2.0 converter which does support 4K at 60fps, this is possible since HDMI 2.0 unlike HDMI 1.4 supports this. See http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/products/reader.en/product/mini-displayport-12- to-hdmi-20-uhd-active-adapter.html

With regards to a wireless connection then as VikingOSX suggests an Apple TV is a very simple way to achieve this, however this will only be at 1920x1080p.

There is another option which you may have been thinking of which is that many TVs support a standard called DNLA also known as uPnP. This allows the TV to 'browse' the media stored on a computer and to play the file. Macs do not have built-in DNLA support but there are many DNLA packages available and in theory one of these would let the Panasonic play movie files stored on the Mac.

Note: Some DNLA programs can 'on-the-fly' convert between different formats, this may be important as the TV is likely to only support a limited range of formats.

KodiTV or Plex maybe the best software to use as 'servers' for the Panasonic to connect to.

John, this are all valid options and a lot of useful detail. As you mention wireless connections, do you have suggestions for using SMB instead of DLNA? The downside of DLNA is that I have to install a server component/service on my Mac. The downside of SMB is that it is a hassle to configure it on a Panasonic TV (I for example can't get it to work).

I would consider a DLNA server when it comes with a sleek interface like "Beamer" (AirPlay and Chromecast only) or Plex. But the DLNA servers I tried either needed Java VM or looked otherwise outdated.

It will only be possible to use SMB if the Panasonic supports it, many modern TVs support DLNA but I don't know if they support SMB. Even if it supports SMB then it might not like the fact Apple use their own version of SMB which as an example many printers/scanners often have problems with so the Panasonic equally may have a problem with it. If however you have the TV and have the Mac then it costs nothing to try SMB.

One recent new problem with Apple's SMB as added in 10.11.5 and is apparently down to Apple setting it to default to require signing network traffic which some SMB clients cannot cope with. If this is the issue then the tip here Re: iOS File Share apps unable to access File Shares since 10.11.5 should help.

Regarding DLNA software have a look at this list - https://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/dlna

The user interface on a Mac will be just handling starting/stopping and selecting a folder to share, the actual browsing will be built-in to the Panasonic as the DLNA client. I do take your point though, some is more polished than others.

There is an app on the Mac App Store called Mirror for Panasonic TV, which let's you do screen mirroring from any Mac to any Panasonic Smart TV. You can find it here: http://apple.co/2bKVcyv

Mirror image quality not good and it was not reliable for me. I use Apple TV 4 and Air Parrot. It works well. Plus Air Parrot Remote on an IOS device allows one to control the Mac remotely. Yes it is a bit expensive but if you really want to do it this is a good way.

Panasonic TC 47et5

MacPro late 2008